OpenAI is giving product cards in ChatGPT Ads a bit of a refresh.
The company is starting to roll out a new product card format that displays additional shopping information directly in the ad, including a product’s price and star rating, according to an update sent to ChatGPT advertisers late last week.
The example shared by OpenAI shows an ad for a cordless vacuum featuring the product name and image alongside a $249.99 price, 4.6-star rating and retailer name.
Why This Matters:
This might seem like a relatively small product update, but it’s an important one if OpenAI wants ChatGPT to become a serious commerce and performance advertising channel.
Price and ratings obviously give users more information to evaluate a product before clicking an ad. They also make ChatGPT’s product ads look and function more like the shopping formats advertisers and consumers are already accustomed to across search and retail media.
And for advertisers, those additional signals could help qualify clicks. Someone who sees a product’s price and rating before clicking has a better idea of what they’re getting — potentially making that click more valuable.
Experts React:
Not to get academic, but Northwestern’s Medill Spiegel Research Center published a landmark study in 2017 on how online reviews affect conversions, laying the groundwork for much of the research that we see now. It found that a product showing even a small number of reviews was 270% more likely to be purchased than one with no reviews.
The point: reviews convince people to buy things. Reviews and ratings are much more common today, so the impact may not be as dramatic. But the research speaks to the potential value of adding ratings to ChatGPT Ads.
By the way, the change was included in the same product update last week that announced new AppsFlyer and Adjust integrations for ChatGPT Ads.
Our Take:
OpenAI is starting to fill in the details of what a mature ChatGPT ad product might actually look like. The company already has an interesting commerce signal: people explicitly asking ChatGPT for recommendations and help deciding what to buy. Adding basic shopping information like prices and ratings makes the ad unit better suited to capitalize on that intent.
This also speaks to OpenAI’s continued push toward smaller, performance-focused advertisers. Interestingly, many assumed ChatGPT Ads would focus heavily on larger brands and enterprise buyers. But it increasingly appears that attracting a high volume of smaller advertisers — similar to the models built by Meta and Google Search — could be the best path to scale ad revenue as the company works toward an IPO.
